Gold Nanoparticles Help Red Blood Cells Deliver Drugs 36
New submitter MTorrice writes "Scientists decorated red blood cells with gold nanoparticles so they could trigger the cells to dump their contents with a zap from a laser. The laser pulses heated the particles to produce nanopores in the cells' membranes. The cells contained two fluorescent dyes and both flooded through the pores and out of the cells after the laser pulses. Although the researchers studied the release of dyes, their end goal is to use red blood cells as a vehicle for drug delivery, because the cells are naturally compatible with the immune system and circulate for days in the body. Until now, researchers have found easy ways to load the cells with drugs, but the challenge has been to control the molecules' release."
Deep Work? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me this would be best used to get drugs delivered deep within the body, such as in a tumor, without dosing the rest of the body, or even near by areas.
But how do they get the laser there? If it were near the surface, a laser could be used. But deeper in the body, liver, brain, etc., how do you get laser light in there to cause the drug bomb to be dropped?
Quoting TFA:
Mario Magnani, of the University of Urbino, in Italy, calls the method novel and interesting, especially because it appears to leave the red blood cells intact. However, he sees two practical problems: Infrared light doesn’t penetrate deeply into body tissue, making many tumors difficult to access with the technique’s laser.
Wouldn't intersecting focused microwaves [technologyreview.com] be a better approach for heating these blood cells than an infrared laser?
More fodder for the WOD (Score:3, Interesting)
their end goal is to use red blood cells as a vehicle for drug delivery
Now they'll have probable cause if the K9's detect that you have red blood cells.
- sarcasm off.
In all seriousness, gold nano particles are being explored medically in some pretty freakin' cool ways - to kill cancer by heating the gold with light [eurekalert.org], kill cancer by heating the gold radio waves in places where light can't reach [nih.gov] and targetted delivery of chemotherapy. [nih.gov]